‘The Simpsons’ to Produce 20-Year-Old Script By Judd Apatow

Exactly 22 years ago, director Judd Apatow ('This is 40,' 'Knocked Up') wrote a script for 'The Simpsons' that was never used (which is not surprising since, at the time, Apatow had no credits and was still a struggling comedian). But now that Judd Apatow is Judd Apatow, 'The Simpsons' are producing the long lost script, which will air next year.

Somehow this Apatow/'Simpsons' story has never been made public until now but at a recent screening of 'This is 40,' Apatow told the audience (via Slashfilm) about his attempts to submit a script to 'The Simpsons' saying:

After only five Simpsons episodes aired, I sat down and tried to write one when I was in my early twenties. And what it was about was they went to see a hypnotism show and at the hypnotism show, they made Homer think he was the same age at Bart. And then the hypnotist had a heart attack. So now Homer and Bart became best friends and they spent the rest of the show running away because Homer didn’t want responsibility and didn’t want to be brought back to his real age. So I basically copied that for every movie I’ve made since.

Unsurprisingly, the 'Simpsons' producers never got back to Apatow and up until recently he had no idea if anyone had ever read it. Well, they've now read it and they're turning it into an episode for next season, which will surely be promoted endlessly across Fox.

While Apatow had no luck with 'The Simpsons' he went on to a storied career on TV with celebrated writing stints on 'The Larry Sanders Show,' 'Rosanne,' 'Freaks and Geeks' and 'The Ben Stiller Show' (the latter of which won Apatow an Emmy).